Seven
Bridges liked to think of herself as a movie star. She had a few small roles in
big-budget movies on her resume’, but the reality was, that she never had the
chops for the big dramatic roles, or the screen-filling beauty of someone like
Lana Turner. She had banged around the industry for years, moving from
b-movies to soft porn. In Hollywood, as in many other show bidness’ arenas,
dare I say it, run by men, acting ability is directly proportional to one’s
degree of EXPECTED undress. Likewise, the length of one’s film career is in
direct proportion to the combined effects of age and gravity on one’s ‘skills’. Seven’s abilities usually insured that she would be as nekkid’ as a jay-bird
within fifteen minutes of the opening credits. This is not to say that she was
not a striking woman. She was quite exotic, with very dark Mediterranean
features, piercing black eyes, and an enormous mouth with inviting, bee-stung
lips.

She
had legally changed her name to Seven Bridges while still in high school,
reasoning that being named after a popular song would give her instant name
recognition, and feeling that her real name, Mildred Tarwater, might be an impediment
to her far-flung and grandiose ambitions. Her years in Hollywood had left her
lonely and un-fulfilled, and she was desperate to establish herself as
something more than a ‘nipple extra’, before it was too late. Through
her association and subsequent romance with a rather militant lesbian, who was
in the forefront of a fledgling animal rights movement incorporated as
‘ACTRESSES’ NETWORK OF ANIMAL LIBERATION’, but soon to be known worldwide by
it’s acronym, ‘A.N.A.L.’, she had hatched a scheme to make a documentary film
that would become the rallying cry for the movement, make her a household name,
and the darling of all the other ‘nipple extras’ who sought a vehicle to
establish their legitimacy. The
obvious place to film such a documentary was the American south, where
frightening ‘Dixiecrats’ hunted rabbit and squirrell, devouring them freely,
and whole families considered an afternoon of fishing to be entertainment. The
boiling spring of animal abuse was rumored to be northeastern Alabama, and the
high plateaus and deep valleys of the Tennessee river basin, where half-blood
Irish/Cherokee savages still took whitetail deer and wild turkey with the bow
and arrow, and the black-powder gun, consuming the flesh, and decorating their lodges
with the heads and beards. She
sold everything she owned, and with the proceeds and meager financial backing
from a few interested razor-free, hairy-legged women, she bought an old
Suburban, hired a cameraman, and rented the equipment needed for such a
production. Just like Lewis and Clark, they headed into the vast, un-charted
hinter-lands of old Dixie, un-sure of what they’d find, but dedicated to the
proposition of capturing on film, the barbaric practices of these un-civilized,
backwoods people.